Don’t Settle

So it all started when I got irritable with God. As these things do, y’know.

I was wrong, you do NOT have to settle.

I always learn from my mistakes. So last month, I started praying for my future husband.

Was it that one, Lord? The one I regret dumping from fear and anxiety last year?

Fear and anxiety was the plague of my life up until 2023. That’s when I ran screaming from all the demons in my old life, told God I would seek Him first in everything, love and seek and seek and seek Him every day. Thus I came to peace, radically.

I think I will reach out to him again and just wait on you. The 2023 deal was — no pursuing men for the wrong reasons, just pursue God.

THEN I went to my friend’s wedding — a mixed bag of motives:

I want to meet this supposed paragon of excellence she met on CatholicMatch. And approve him for her, see him and know for myself that he is perfect for her.

I want to throw down and party and rejoice with her at her first and only wedding — Catholics mate for life you know. I won’t count the cost, I will be so generous and fly out there. Forget the “cheaper” thing my mom wanted me to volunteer for at church — that will be there next year. Sometimes you give up a good thing for an even greater thing in life.

I want to meet and chat with this little brother of hers she’s been asking me to date for three years. I’ve never had a conversation with him.

Well we danced and chatted and I briefly fell in love because he’s a great dancer — really, ten out of ten. But then his older sister said:

Yeah he only dates party girls. He needs to get his life together. The last one cheated on him, so maybe he learned his lesson.

And I thought,

LOL, I am not a party girl. I will NOT wait around for him to wake up and realize I’m a woman of quality, I’m the woman of his dreams. That’s it, Lord, I GIVE UP. I’m tired of the dates, I’m tired of all these guys in my DMs, I just need ONE, I just need a very handsome ONE, I will NOT settle for secondbest, I will keep pursuing you in everything and focus on other things. YOU KNOW MY CRITERIA.

Then, like three days later, the man of my dreams liked my CatholicMatch profile.

And I looked at his and thought, JACKPOT.

He’s in Ireland. I thought of a good Catholic man I knew in the past who mentored me for a while. I thought,

Love can span continents. There are good Catholics all over the world. God is love. God is so, so big. Oh thanks be to God!

So then I asked him what he was reading — as you do — and then somewhere in there he gave me the compliment of a lifetime. And because I’ve been thinking everyday Fearfully and wonderfully made and also my best friend recently chewed me out for ever being envious of her good looks, when he also said “gorgeous,” I finally believed him. I finally believed the compliments of a Catholic man. And my heart melted.

And then HE said, I’ve been praying my future wife will be like Mary and I will be like Joseph and I said, Oh, I was praying for this [insert very specific list of criteria], including but not limited to: is a good provider and will never divorce me, and he was like WOW I WANT YOU.

That’s essentially the long and the short of it.

I’m very German, always tell people what I think.

He is from Portugal and Sri Lanka and so, so, so handsome.

I’m a very Catholic, very educated woman of quality. He is the same, has like five degrees or something. My family and friends are going to LOVE him.

So then over the course of six days and about ten texts we decided our future together.

And it’s so, so, so easy, it’s ridiculous. It’s like two souls talking to each other.

It’s as easy as breathing.